Nước chấm (Vietnamese dipping sauce) – Our family secret ratio

Nuoc cham is the little bowl of sauce that makes the entire Vietnamese table come alive.

Spoon it over a vermicelli bowl and suddenly the noodles are not just noodles. The grilled meat tastes more balanced, the herbs taste fresher, the pickled vegetables become brighter and every last bit at the bottom of the bowl is worth chasing around with your chopsticks.

It is sweet, salty, sharp and savoury all at once. And despite all that flavour, our family’s nuoc cham contains only four ingredients.

Yes. Four.

We always hear about food requiring balance. This recipe is the epidemy of balancing flavours.

But before you start casually tipping things into a bowl and hoping for the best, there is one thing you need to know: great nuoc cham is all about the ratio.

Every family has their own nuoc cham ratio

Ask five Vietnamese families how they make nuoc cham and you will probably get five different answers. The same goes for Vietnamese restaurants. Every restaurant has their own secret ratio, and some protect it like KFC protects its secret herbs and spices.

Too much fish sauce and it punches you in the face. Too much vinegar and your lips pucker before the first proper mouthful. Too much sugar and you have somehow made fish-sauce cordial.

Get the balance right, though, and everything clicks.

This recipe was given to me by my mum, and I honestly think it is too good not to share with the world. Great recipes should not just be locked away in the family vault.

After all, food is for sharing, right?

So here it is.

That is the whole secret.

Every ingredient is measured by volume, not by weight. Use the same spoon, cup or container for every part and the ratio will work. A tablespoon is easiest for a family-sized batch, but you can scale it up for a party or scale it down when dinner is just for two.

Variations

There are many variations of nouc cham but only a few that is worthy of putting on the table for your loved ones. Once I have made the sauce, I sometimes add in additional ingredients to vary the taste slightly. Most common additions are:

• whole raw garlic – added to the nouc cham when storing in the fridge over time)
• chopped garlic – added directly to the dipping bowl
• chopping chili – added directly to the dipping bowl
• pickled carrots and daikon – added directly to the dipping bowl

Give these a try when you have mastered the nouc cham recipe.

Nuoc cham ingredients

• 2 tablespoons vinegar – plain white vinegar works well
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 5 tablespoons sugar
• 6 tablespoons water

This is simply the 1 : 1.5 : 2.5 : 3 ratio doubled so that we can use whole tablespoons. Much easier than trying to measure half a spoon while hungry people hover around the kitchen.

How to make nuoc cham

1. Add the sugar and water to a bowl or jar. Use warm water—not boiling—and stir until the sugar has completely dissolved.
2. Add the vinegar and fish sauce.
3. Stir well, then taste it with the food you plan to serve rather than tasting a heroic spoonful on its own. Nuoc cham is designed to bring a dish together, not to be consumed like soup.
4. Let it cool before serving if you used warm water.

That is it. No saucepan. No blender. Just four ingredients in the right proportions.

The most important rule: measure everything the same way

This is not the moment for a splash of this and a glug of that. I love relaxed cooking as much as anyone, but nuoc cham rewards a little discipline.

If you measure the vinegar with a tablespoon, measure everything with that tablespoon. If you use a small cup, use that same cup for all four ingredients. Do not weigh the sugar and then measure the liquids by volume—the ratio was created for volume measurements.

Once you know the flavour, you can make tiny adjustments for the food you are serving. But make the original ratio first. You need to know where home is before you start wandering off.

What to serve with nuoc cham

Nouc cham is one of the most versatile dipping sauce that I know. It is so well balanced that it can be eaten with almost any savoury dish and will instantly balance out the flavours of salty, sweet and tangy. But the most common way our family use nouc cham (and loads of it) is with Vietnamese vermicelli bowls.

It is also brilliant with:

• Vietnamese rice-paper spring rolls
• Crispy egg-wrapper spring rolls
• Grilled pork or prawns
• Vietnamese salads
• Rice dishes

I like to put a large bowl of nouc cham on the table with a small ladle for everyone to help themselves for more nouc cham (and people always refill 2nds and 3rd bowls of nouc cham).

Making it ahead of time

We ALWAYS have a jar of Nouc cham in the fridge ready to go. When it’s running low, I instantly make more and store it in the fridge. I sometimes like to drop in 1 or 2 cloves of raw garlic into the jar along with the nouc cham and let it infuse into the sauce. Whenever the nouc cham runs out, throw out the garlic, and rinse and repeat (I mean, literally rinse, wash and repeat) and put the jar back into the fridge ready to go.